Tag: Emmaus community

In a single month a while ago I made four visits and had four snapshots of quiet revolution.

A tour round Jimmy’s Nightshelter in central Cambridge

Taking some furniture to be recycled at the Emmaus community north of Cambridge

Buying some fairly traded food at the Daily Bread Cooperative in the North of Cambridge

Popping in to see the manager of our own St Martin’s Centre for the elderly.

Each place exuded peace and a kind of a quiet well-ordered-ness. Each place runs through the hands of many volunteers and a number of full-time staff who are not paid well. Each fights almost daily battles with bureaucracy and politics that threaten to capsize the whole ship. Yet each provides a vital service to a large part of a city.

Each is an expression of Christian faith that is unsung, long-term, wholly appropriate for the 21st century.

Then I read this quote — more appropriate to regions outside Europe, but still relevant.

‘Alongside the political, economic, social and technological revolutions … which have commanded enormous media attention and coverage … there has been this far less trumpeted, but equally important revolution in the status and standing of worldwide Christianity. Few have taken on board what is happening.’ (Kenneth Hylsom-Smith To the ends of the earth ISBN 978 1 842 274 750)